(Closed) What would you do? Stumbled upon message implying husband is bisexual

I can’t believe I even have to write this post, so confused. A bit of a backstory, so bear with me. Sorry it’s so long.

I am a newlywed, and the beginning of our marriage has been absolutely amazing, I have pretty much no complaints. My husband is wonderful, is better to me than I deserve to be honest. We’ve been together for almost 10 years, since we gradauted high school. The reason I am writing this post is I stumbled unintentionally on something last night that threw me for a loop.

I was just messing around on the computer, wasting time since DH has a friend from out of town visiting. DH walks over and shows me this family picture someone sent him in a Facebook message recently (in his Facebook acct). He walks away as I am looking at said picture. This is where I 100% made a mistake and accept responsibilty, and is what is leading me to this post. After I click out of the picture, I scroll through some of his recent messages on Facebook, just being bored and nosey. (for the record, we’ve shared passwords for Facebook and email for years, not as a condition or anything, but to get into each others account if say he had to use my Amazon acct, etc. Both of our email accounts and such are usually logged in at the computer, so we’ve just always been transparent, though I don’t think either of us has really used it to snoop.) So just glancing through messages, and the message window shows a preview of the text of the message. The message that caught my eye is this:

“Does she know you are bi?”

This message is from a guy that DH or I haven’t seen or talked to in probably 6 years, a college friend from before DH transferred to another school. The message was sent about a year ago, roughly 6 months before we got married. There was no response to it, and DH is no longer Facebook friends with the person in question. (Neither am I in fact, I had unfriended him randomly sometime in the past year since I don’t know him well and never thought I would see or talk to him again. Though he did randomly Facebook chat me once which was awkward)

So now that I saw this message, I can’t unsee it (though I wish I could) and I can’t stop thinking about it. I see a couple possibilities, and can’t decide what to do.

1) It’s true, and it’s something I have never known about DH. Just to clarify, if this were the case, it wouldn’t change how I feel about DH or our marriage, but it is something I would want to know because it changes the rules a bit I think. I love him and he is an amazing husband, but I do expect a monogamous relationship and it means possibly years of lies, and the question if I should be screened for more STDs than I have been, etc.

2) It’s a poorly delivered joke. The guy in question is kind of strange anyway, and he is from a foreign country, so possibly the humor didn’t deliver. Some of DH’s friends from high school and early college have had off-color humor before, so it wouldn’t be completely out of the question.

I’m trying to decide if I should take this random message seriously enough to ask DH about it. The thing is this isn’t someonce I trust the words of, but why would they go out of their way to send that message when DH hadn’t seen him in at least 6 years? It just seems weird. And the fact that DH didn’t respond to it leads me to believe he didn’t deem it worth his time. But he also didn’t delete the message, so it doesn’t seem like some crazy secret he is going out of his way to hide. And I have no idea if DH unfriended this guy or the other way around.

Some random googling on the subject of how to know if you partner is bi or gay gives ridiculous results, ranging from that bisexuality doesn’t exist and it’s just a gateway to being gay, or that it’s awful to force a bisexual spouse to not act out on urges they have towards the other sex, etc. And none of the “telltale signs” that I deem remotely legitimate apply to our relationship, i.e. lack of sex or a big interest in anal sex. We have sex at least 3-4 times a week (would be more but we have opposite works schedules) and we haven’t had anal sex yet, though it has been discussed as something to try. Behaviour-wise, there has never been anything to even make think for half a second that DH has any other sexual interests, though I am not convinced it’s something you can tell that way either. He’s not overly macho like he’s trying to compensate, nor remotely metrosexual/effeminate. He’s just an average, seeminly heterosexual man. In fact, I’ve always deemed him more confident in his sexuality to care what people think, for instance, he actually works in an extremely female dominated field, the type of field that homophobes often say “male XXX’s are gay.”

So my issue is, do I put enough stock in this random Facebook message to ask him about it? My biggest fears are hurting or insulting him by questioning his sexuality if it’s not true, or making him feel afraid and confronted if it is. I really really wish I could have just asked him about it immediately when I saw it last night, but as I mentioned we have company in town and it’s not a subject I want to broach in front of others. I was super freaked about it last night because I was just shell-shocked, today much less so, but still it’s eating at me. Maybe I’m still in denial, I dunno.

So Bees, let me have it. What would you do in this situation? Would you ask DH about it, or not? And please don’t suggest I leave or divorce him, that is not the point of this post and is not even on the table. Mostly I just don’t want to rock the boat or hurt him over something stupid, a bad rumor or assumption or joke.

TL;DR – would you confront your husband if a random message made it seem like he was bisexual, even from a source you don’t necessarily trust?

Well, that’s a tricky one – and all I can tell you is what *I* would do.

I would fess up to looking at his messages. In an apologetic, ‘I was just bored and browsing’ kind of way. Asyou have alread said, you can’t not think about it.

But confront? that’s definitely the wrong mindset for me. If you trust he loves you, he understands you, then you probably already trust he would not expose you to anything harmful in the way of STDs if he *was* bi – because if he has had those kinds of encounters in the past and is sensible, he will have been tested.

Rgardless, I think it’s somthing you won’t be at peace with until you ask him. Make it clear that there is no judgement, that you would just like to know and, like you have said on here, that it makes no difference to you.

I am bisexual, and told my now FH a few months into our relationship – and he hasn’t questioned me at all. I commend you on the no-judging, god knows I’ve had exes tell me that I’m a) just greedy or b) just not decided I’m gay/straight yet. Acceptance and understanding is key and means the most.

Whoa. First off, I think you need to read up on what bisexual really means because you seem to be off base with a lot of your assumptions. Saying it’s ” unfair to not allow a bisexual spouse to not act out on urges they have towards the other sex” is like saying it’s unfair to expect a heterosexual spouse not to act on their urges when they’re in a relationship.

Being bisexual does not mean he is less monogamous. Your comment about STDs implies that, since you say you may have to be screened for more, like he’s been cheating on you or something. Just because someone likes something sexually does not mean they NEED it, and not having sex with men while married to you is no different than him not having sex with other women while married to you.

I might bring it up but I would emphasize that it doesn’t change your relationship and you just want to know out of curiousity.

If you’ve been with your DH for 10 years, and he has met this person he was having the conversation with within that time…I would question the relationship.

This is 100% an assumption…but my mind would immediately go to why he would share this information with a fellow male friend. I think that most men are very timid in divulging information like that to men they aren’t extremely close with.

@Drift_Avalii: Thank you for this post, it is very well thought out and helpful. And you are right, confront was a poor word choice. Most of my concerns are there is only an 8 month period in the past 9 years that we were not dating/engaged/married. We started dating when I was 17, broke up briefly when he first went to college, and got back together 8 months later. So there is a VERY small window for any experimentation, etc. When we got back together he said he was still a virgin, as was I. In my heart of heart I do not believe he has cheated on me. But how would he know he is bi if he didn’t experiment at some point? The fear or uncovering hidden lies is really my only fear here.

@stephanie63087: I don’t have an issue if he is bi, but it’s just a big thing to not know about the person you married before the fact. It wouldn’t change anything, but I do have questions.

@BagsnBooks: If you re-read my OP, you’ll see that that comment was in reference to something I read on the internet that I found ridiculous. So it’s not my assumption. In fact it came from a psychology article I read, but I made it clear I disagree.

@distracts: Sorry I should have added more context. The reason I am worried about STD’s is as I described in my reply to @Drift_Avalii: timeline-wise in our relationship, there isn’t a lot of wiggle room for when any other encounters would have happened without him either lying about it, or cheating. We started dating in high school, took an 8 month break before we got back together, at which point he told me he was still a virgin. So to have been with someone else it would have either not have had reached intercourse level, or there is some missing information.

@KateByDesign: I know him but mostly as an acquaintance, not really well enough to say definitively one way or the other. If he is gay or bisexual he’s not open about it. But it’s not someone I thought DH was close with, hence my confusion.

@BagsnBooks: That was her point. That when she googled, she found (in her words) “ridiculous results” including what you cited.

i have no advice, just wanted to point that out…

@distracts: I think it’s fair to be concerned about STDs. She is concerned that because he has never talked to her about it, he is hiding more from her, including potential other partners. She isn’t saying she needs to for sure, just that she wants more info in case that’s true. I see the same concern from women worried about a weird message about another woman. It’s more about the information withheld than about the potential that he is bisexual.

Exactly this. People seem to have this misconception that someone who is bisexual needs to have sex with men and women and cannot be in a monogamous relationship because they will always be lusting over not being able to be fulfilled by that other sex.

And it’s complete bull. I’m bi and all that means is that I have the capacity for attraction in men as well as women. It’s like I’m attracted to redheads. I’m also attracted to brunnetes. That doesn’t mean if I’m dating a redhead, I’m going to be uphappy in my relationship because I’m being fulfilled with a relationship with a brunnete.

It’s just silly.

</rant>

As for what you should do. Talk to him about it – bring it up and be certain to make it clear to him that it doesn’t change anything. But you’re married, you’re suppose to be able to share these things with your partner. 🙂 Good luck!

Why does his sexuality matter? People can’t help what their sexuality is. Chances are that if he is Bi, he didn’t wake up and go, “Gee, I think I’ll be Bi.” You didn’t choose to be straight? Gay people don’t choose to be gay.

His sexuality won’t affect your marriage, so why bother? He married you and things are good. If he’s not cheating on you, who cares if he at one point was into other men?

I would not care if my husband was bi. He married me and that’s all I care about.